Saturday, January 31, 2015

flood gates

The pond dam behind our house has a small flat area in one "corner" called a spillway. I've only seen water flow over it a a few times since we've lived here - during hurricanes or extended heavy rain times, and once when a dead turtle got stuck on top of the drain pipe and we had a day of rain.

But about a month ago, something got stuck inside the pipe (the country in me wants to write "down inside" but Bobby always gripes when I stick the extra preposition "down" in front of another preposition), and the water level has been quite high and has been going over the spillway at a regular rate since then. Since the workers have cleared a path for the sewer line near the spillway, I was able to walk through part of it and see exactly where it returns to the stream (as opposed to where the pipe empties water on the other side of the dam).

The pond easing over the spillway. It's usually at least a foot lower.

and the stream heading to the woods (last week during the heavy rains this entire grassy spot was covered)

and the water easing through the debris that's been cut and mulched for the sewer lines

where it begins to reunite with the stream. I was amazed at how deep this culvert is - at least 7 ft down.

and the water has fallen hard enough that it's created a tiny pond back behind all this mud

a water trail from last week when we had 2 days of rain

standing behind the culvert. If you look hard through the trees on the left, you can see our house up the hill.

I have pictures somewhere of how high the pond is, but I'll have to find those at a later date. But for those who've been here, it has stayed even with the bottom of the floor boards on the pier the last few weeks (except for 2 rainy days when it rose to the top of the floor boards).